As we journey toward the undiscovered country called the future we are witnessing a world of terror, violence, greed, exploitation, pollution, and algorithm annihilation wreaking havoc in our world.

It’s no wonder in the face of such horror. that most of us feel minuscule and completely powerless.

But the world is glittering with possibility which can’t afford to wait for a generational change.

We’re clearly at a moment of great global transition and transformation as we attempt to help solve massive emerging issues we need more dreams than memories.

Help the world and the world will help you back.

In addition to globalization, technology, social changes and government policies that have all been instrumental in determining who benefits and who loses out from global economic integration in past decades we now have giants that deal in data, the oil of the digital era.

We can dream of a world rich enough to pay everyone a living wage as a birthright, of thriving human creativity, and of thrilling new ways for humans to build on and collaborate with machine intelligence but are we fooling ourselves.

There are no quick answers.

It may take a revolution in education; we may even need to rethink capitalism itself.

Certainly, we’ll need ideas to address the growing inequality that is driving so much of the anger we see in the world.

It seems clear now that millions of people around the world are rejecting a global order that they feel was foisted on them and has given them nothing.

We need to give a platform to dreamers and reformers who are thinking outside the box as the current system is in danger of breaking.

One in every nine people goes to bed hungry each night.

Up to one-third of the food produced around the world is never consumed.

Every 10 seconds, a child dies from hunger.

We are witnessing a massive shift of humanity unlike any seen before.

Today more than 68 million people around the world are displaced from their homes.

If you compare your size to the size of the universe, you almost don’t exist.

As Martin Luther King, Jr said, “We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.”

What happens to society when the focus of culture is on the self and its icon, the “selfie”?

And what happens to morality when the mantra is no longer “We’re all in this together”, but rather “I’m free to be myself”?

What happens when Google filters and Facebook friends divide us into non-communicating sects of the like-minded?

What could possibly be gained from ignoring the global view, that, the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is the sole reason that humankind’s ecological footprint is larger than Earth itself?

I would like people not to be satisfied with the current ecological footprint and try to come up with measures that really track the water, soil and all the ways we degrade ecosystems in a way that would become management metrics.

The dream of one world is not threatening, but beautiful.

Once one person does the “impossible”, thousands of people follow only because their mind starts believing it’s possible.

It means you must take the time to:

a) Define your values and guiding principles.

b) Understand your nature and individuality.

Define the experiences you want to have in life. Then, do everything you can to realize those experiences.

Try and leave this world a little better than you found it.

We must start extending our sense of shared identity to all of humanity.

We’re battling here for the survival of an idea on which the world’s future depends, the idea of humanity as one connected family.

But how do we get there?

First and foremost we must start breaking the cycle of poverty.

So let’s seek out those with compelling ideas to offer here other than like clicks and abuse.

The key may be to stop framing this dream as a top-down system driven by faceless global elites who tell us all what to do, but instead as a flourishing of human possibility that’s happening right here on the ground.

Ideas can’t be contained by borders.

Most countries are in ecological deficit.

We have technologies that can inflict global harm, our very survival now depends on it.

The Brexit referendum has and is demonstrating that the EU is not an irrevocable project.

It is now an internal power struggle while the EU _was_ an attempt to ensure peace and prosperity over the west part of the continent instead of the “costly” wars and colonial economics.

However, as the days go bye it is becoming more and more apparent that the EU is not for the people of Europe as a whole.

Brexit for all its reasons is an example that is now shining a light on the forthcoming European Elections. Especially on the pros and cons of is there a future as separated national states or the Union.

Why?

Because Brexit’s main players have failed to comprehend the true significance of the European Union, bringer of peace.

Probably they intentionally refused to understand it in order to carry forth their destructive policies without qualms, hoping to reap the fruits in national elections.

But what is actually happening is that it is bringing England and their voters into a state of isolation, coupled with political and economic problems that are currently afflicting the United Kingdom it might be no longer a Union.

There is no doubting that Brexit will negatively affect the European Union, and its Member States, and its citizens, but the EU will be compensated by having gotten rid of a reluctant member that constantly hindered every effort aimed at the necessary, logical development of the integration process.

This is no fault of the in or out voters, rather it is playing out the falsehoods spread by Social media that appeal to nationalism rules & will, which in the current set up of the European Union will trump the forced solidarity of Brussels.

No one can “force solidarity” upon you. Nor can a currency forge deeper integration.

Only collective suicide can do so.

So are the up and coming elections going to deeper disunity than unity?

The results of the European elections will constitute the grounds for the renewal of EU institutions and of its leadership. It then remains to be seen to what extent Europeans would have a political interest in mitigating the psychological impact of this Brexit chaos on European citizens.

At the end of all this madness, what is the EU going to look like?

On May 23 to 26 the citizens of 27 Member States will be called to renew the European Parliament. Then it is the turn of the formation of the new EU Commission. A busy timetable marked by growing anti-European movements and by the possibility of citizens’ mobilization.

If England requests an extension of article 50 it will extend into the period of Europes own elections thus linking the absurd ongoing spectacle in the British Parliament- which will lead to all of us witnessing the consequences of anti-European, nationalistic propaganda based on lies and slander against the European project.

So Europe will be in a quandary.

It cannot be seen unwilling to offer an extension, nor can it risk a Brexit bush fire by an extension of Article 50 over four months.

The current crisis that Europeans are both observing and undergoing is nothing but the readjustment of a project that no longer serves the needs of the day properly, and therefore needs renovation.

The last thing it needs is squabbling noncooperative English second peoples referendum or general election influencing its own elections which will have more than ample pitfalls of their own.

The Union is a rule-based union > if it is perceived to modify its rules without open democratic transparency it can only blame itself for its disintegration.

The Union might be only sixty odd years old but its history of breaking rules.

A confederation is based on trickle-down authority. The ultimate power lies in the individual states. It has no effective powers to prevent its own member states from violating its core values of respect for democracy, fundamental rights, and the rule of law.

Take Hungary, for example. Here is a member state casually flouting basic democratic norms and human rights, swiftly evolving into an authoritarian nightmare, with absolutely no meaningful consequences. The country’s parliament has not just passed a law making claims for asylum almost impossible:

Take Poland, for example. Authoritarian Poland is making an utter mockery of the EU’s stated commitment to democracy and human rights.

Defining appropriate institutions to regulate and mediate between economic and social forces is a global and not just European challenge, but its achievement may appear too far out of reach.

The EU is buffeted by multiple crises, from Brexit to the assumption of power of a Eurosceptic Italian government.

But its acceptance of its own member states succumbing to authoritarianism may prove its greatest existential threat of all.

One of the biggest problems with the EU is not how the politicians are “elected”, but how can you get rid of them when they fail to perform.

For many reasons, (addressed in previous posts) I think the EU project is fundamentally flawed. That those who “run” the EU are not subjected to a democratic election is scandalous.

Integration is what has given Europe its strength in economic globalization, and this integration will play a huge part in Europe’s survival in the age of political globalization. They cannot be tarnished by concession to England just for the sake of the Market.

Closer integration will have to include services but also the huge market for training and skills. It will comprise an energy union, just as it will have to comprise a proper “market” for people. This market will include not just the now-endangered EU principle of free movement in the EU. It will also include its flip side, a properly regulated shared “market” for immigrants.

What seems impossible today will have to come, no matter how much nationalist sentiments stand against it.

The EU serves a purpose, and its workings and its setup will have to be adapted as this purpose changes. Again and again.

How can this be achieved?

Fundamentally, the EU either serves the needs of the day or it gets into a crisis.

A more open decision-making process might have a positive effect on public interest in democracy at the EU level but it will not unity because it is becoming more and more evident that the single market with all its rules is more important than the citizens.

The dominant dividing line of the new parliament will become a contest between politicians who want to find common EU-level solutions to current challenges and those who favour safeguarding and reaffirming national sovereignty.

So I predict a Europe in which values will be handled closer to the lowest common denominator than to the great ideals that Europe wants to stand for.

This will be a source of never-ending tension, but it will prove less costly than becoming divided over maximalist morals only to lose out in the harsh world of political globalization.

The peoples of Europe will no longer integrate because they feel love for the idea of an integrated Europe—if ever they did. Integration will come only when the pain is really massive. And it is massive only in some policy fields, not in all. And it will remain so until the European Union affords a direct opportunity to its citizens to invest in EU that brings a reward with that investment. ( See the previous Post)

The politics of fear by building electoral platforms based on liberal principles, pointing out the big challenges surrounding technology and climate change, and showing that migration is just one issue among many.

There is no real hope for EU federalists because the Union relies on a global order that the Europeans are unable to guarantee. The direction of integration is more diffuse now than in the past.

However, the quest for political order on a planet that has outgrown its merely regional structure might have the chance to make a difference.

So with the European elections this time it’s not enough to hope for a better future: this time each and every one of us must take responsibility for it too.

Artificial intelligence has been confined to the lab for so long that it is hard sometimes to recognise that it is now an actual technology that we use without thinking. The EU is right to try to harness it.

Voting, on the other hand, has not been around for a long time, it now needs more thinking than ever.

After a woeful five years, this is perhaps last chance for the EU to prove it can regain the initiative. The stakes have never been higher, and the EU needs someone who is confident, can communicate and represents the people.

The EU needs a serious person at the helm, and it cannot afford to leave the choice to an obscure process that has so far failed to find the best person for the job.

The ‘technocratic’ rhetoric of economists and central bankers convinced most people that there is no feasible alternative to (financial) market logic, to fiscal austerity, low wages, flexible labour markets and independent central banks.

This way, establishment economics has constrained (and continues to constrain) political choices, stripping electorates of their autonomy in political and moral judgement.

This is a dangerous game since the only way disenfranchised electorates can express their anger, anxiety and powerlessness is by choosing self-defined.

The tragedy of Brexit powered by Farage & all doesn’t have any real solutions.

All human comments appreciated. All abuse or like clicks chucked in the bin.

Dig deep enough into the fabric of reality and you are left with the above question.

The story of our recent technological development has been one of ever-increasing computational power. At some future time, we will surely begin to simulate everything, including the evolutionary history that led to where we are.

But in our increasingly digital, algorithm-driven world what is a reality.

The journey from Virtual Reality to Reality itself is looking possible. In the wake of all Artifical intelligence development, it’s not doubtful that this level of immersion will be achieved.

The illusion becomes the prevailing reality.

An algorithm-oriented way of thinking that is quickly spreading throughout all fields of natural and social sciences and percolating into every aspect of our everyday life will have an enormous impact what is a reality.

Under the conceptual metaphor of “everything as algorithms,” which means learnings from one domain could theoretically be applied to another, thus accelerating scientific and technological advances for the betterment of our world, will lead to the reality of the world disappearing.

As a result of this takeover of algorithms in all domains of our everyday life, non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves, therefore luring us in an algorithmic trap that presents the most common-denominator, homogenized experience as the best option to everyone.

However, when data is selected and coded with unchecked bias, the algorithms become biased too.

So it not hypothetical to say we will reach a point when AI will present its result as the only viable choice, the only true narrative based on data then there can be no such thing as reality.

We cannot say that reality is a fact.

Why?

Just because sufficiently many people believe in something does not make it real. As the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick put it, the reality is that which, if you stop believing in it, does not go away. Because it is in a constant state of expansion, it isn’t what it seems.

Nothing is real until it is observed, or measured. So, is really built on emptiness?

How do many possibilities become one physical reality?

Is there an external reality that exists independently of our observations creating matter as derivative from consciousness.

Why?

Because the human brain is incapable of churning out anything beyond what we put in?

However, as we are made of essentially the same genetic material and receive essentially the same sensory inputs so one’s own consciousness is all there is.,

Then the world is also subject to our collective perception. Thus we form our world together, from one infinite moment to the next.

Does reality come down to information?

What do we mean by ‘know’?”

Will superintelligence be a reality unknowable by us?

If it acquires all the knowledge of the world and us it will have fundamental ramifications for our concept of reality. The nature of reality will have two perceptual realms. Virtual reality will quite simply be able to take you places you have never gone before.

Virtual reality will become more sensory oriented in the future. Once it begins catering to the senses, like what we feel body-wise, temperature-wise, and smell, the reality factor of virtual reality becomes stronger and the virtual piece begins to fade.

By 2050, you won’t be able to tell the difference between the “real” and the “virtual” world.

Our language is subject to change so our reality is subject to change also.

More than a decade ago, the first real smartphone hit the market and made screens an essential ingredient in our lives. As a result, it has changed how we communicate, work, travel, purchase and more.

A platform shift of what is real is imminent. Do we make real, or does it make us?

No matter how intelligent we or our robots might get, neither will find the source of reality as it is in constant transition.

SOME MIGHT WILL SAY THAT REALITY IS THE CENTER OF A BLACK HOLE.

A “gravitational singularity” which in many ways represents all that we still don’t know about the universe.

Surrounding each black hole, meanwhile, is an invisible boundary known as the “event horizon” that essentially marks the point of no return.

They, however, are processes so it’s conceivable, that living matter might be able to exist within a black hole without being consigned to that harsh and eternal oblivion.

It’s almost impossible to guess what it would really be like inside a

black hole.

‘No One Really Knows’

Black holes do not seem to me to be a thing or a place but a transition.

This raises an interesting question as to the matter being spewed out to the other side of what. Einstein space-time?

The black hole/ big bang events are just another of the realities. Both have to have atoms to happen and none of us, although we like everything, are made of atoms which are 90% made up of empty space know what occupies this space.

In the end, the only place we have any chance of determining reality is where there is no temperature- vibrations – gravity- matter-energy-vacuum- atomless- lightless- timeless all totally unobservable.

All human comments appreciated. All abuse and like clicks chunked into the bin.

With the ability to share truth and untruths through social media right now, it’s difficult to know what to trust or who to trust.

Are we seeing a return to protectionism or the redefining of capitalism, to sustainability before profit?

There is one certainty Social media is having an effect on where power and how power is used giving rise to Popolusim contra Eliatilism.

So I think it is time to be a bit more honest and plain-speaking about the circumstances that have led to Brexit.

Politics and the media are being pushed to the limit by advancements in technology and uncertainty about the future.

Misinformation is spreading.

When it comes to Brexit, we have reached the point where, to an extraordinary extent, the implementation of the 2016 referendum result trumps all else. But as we approach the departure date all statements about British politics should be assumed to include to the word “probably”

If it will happen when it will happen.

For the most part, the debate about Brexit since the 2016 referendum has been framed primarily in economic terms but it is my contention that Brexit, whether it happens or not, is now showing that the EU never was the problem.

The problem is fixing Britain’s relationship with itself.

The irony is that the country that was least affected by the migration crisis is the one where we are now seeing the most consequential political backlash.

Those who promise that leaving the EU will deliver “control” are really promising something quite specific: a social and cultural reboot.

Of course, this is a complete impossibility. We live in a world defined by the economic, social and cultural interdependence of nation states.

Take back control” was indeed the slogan of the Leave campaign, but it was “control” with one purpose, above all others, the relationship between taxation and public spending and immigration.

A wealthy nation is essential both to the aspirations of individual households and the funding of public services. Unfortunately, England is now reaping the rewards of putting the economy before its people.

Of selling most of its assets, of investing in a world image of power when in fact its people were on the streets due to lack of social housing, were lying in hospital corridors due to lack of funding, were relying on food banks due to lack of decent wages, were running up personal debts, were educated for the market place.

These are now the gravitational centre of the whole debate:

Britain’s act of masochism in leaving the EU will create a country that is unpopular, self-hating and insecure about its identity.

There will be no game-changing trade deals.

It is better that they draw this conclusion today rather than in 2040 after a period of harsh isolation in the middle of the North Sea.

The British people (and particularly the English), who have been in search of their identity since 1945, might finally recognize that it lies not in the distant past (Empire/Commonwealth), nor in the recent past (“special relationship” with the US) but in the future.

The only sensible course, therefore, is to suspend Article 50 and request a return to the status quo ante.

This could be done following a proper constitutional process, meaning a parliamentary vote. Britain can unilaterally revoke Article 50 and therefore freeze the process of leaving the EU.

Britain can write a letter to the EU and state that it wants to freeze its withdrawal process, and that’s what it takes to get yourself off the default path towards crashing out.

However, this process cannot be used just to pause the process and regroup.

In order to pause the process and regroup, the U.K. would need to have the consent of all the other EU members.

If it were just a request to say, oh, we’ve really lost our mind, we don’t quite know what to do, it’s very unlikely that the other 27 members would say, oh, yeah, sure, fine, let’s do that.

Then we come to the Backstop re Northern Ireland;

Northern Ireland wants some legally binding assurances that the U.K. will be able to get out of it unilaterally.

The probability of EU leaders conceding this is zero. And it’s zero today. And it’s zero down the road.

The EU’s position has been very much: This is—this is not negotiable. And, frankly, they all know that you know, a number of EU members are unhappy with the terms of the withdrawal agreement. And if it were to be reopened, it would be a whole can of worms with a lot of, you know, different asks being put on the table.

So this is just not going to happen without the backstop becoming the front stop.

The priority list in continental Europe, with coming elections you know, Brexit isn’t the first thing, or the second thing, or the third thing; it’s somewhere after that.

The disasters to befall the EU27 won’t have befallen them. They will, instead, have continued to evolve their community, grow their economy, taken heed of lessons played out across the Channel, made things better.

Does any of this matter?

Because London is fine, Westminster and the BBC will say Britain is fine. This is no longer so, there is a much uglier reality and one that has little to do with GDP.

If London loses its financial clout there will be a fundamental change to the British economy that Britain now needs to cycle through before it can clarify where it wants to end up with in this Brexit process.

Brexit is both symptom and cause of a breakdown in this consensus.

This needs to be understood outside the day-to-day disasters of the Brexit process itself.

The NHS won’t have fixed itself. Nor will social care. Nor pension problem. Nor it’s out of date infrastructure.

So low and behold we now see department ministers promising funds to fix the NHS etc. However, Brexit will be a suffocating error when it comes to finding these funds. A poorer U.K. outside the EU will be less useful both as a military ally and as a diplomatic partner or as a trading partner.

There could be one unanticipated positive outcome.

The conventional politics of “left versus right” no longer apply:

The political party that can transcend party lines and speak to people across the ideological spectrum will be the rising voice in the next 10 years.

It is unlikely that either of the main political parties in England will survive in their current forms, given the pressures their internal coalitions are already under.

It does not take a nitwit that global we are witnessed the highest number of global battle deaths for 25 years, persistently high levels of terrorism, and the highest number of refugees and displaced people since World War II.

If this is not observable we are left with “the essence of bullshit: a complete lack of concern with truth” and “an indifference to how things really are.”

All one has to do is turn on your TV. Who can tell what infringements to our civil liberties will have been introduced in the name of keeping us safe? What new walls will be built?

The important thing is not that what he says is true, but that it persuades. and by then none of us will have recourse to Europe to stave them off, either?

Luckily there is no such thing as an average human being.

Nonetheless, that fictional construct is precisely what businesses use to explain human behaviour, reducing us to mere consumers.

There are however those who navigate the currents of uncertainty and change without the need for any particular dogma or orthodoxy to guide them. These are the innovators, thinkers, misfits, activists, artists, and creators who can be found on the fringes of any walk of life, nipping at the hem of hegemonic power, disrupting the status quo, and bravely embracing the unknown.

The future belongs to these voices, not to a world where the truth has become so malleable and subjective as to be almost meaningless as a concept.

It also belongs to those brave enough to stand up to bullshit in some of its most vaunted forms. There is some hope for this.

The fine line between the present and the future never looked so blurry.

However, the truth has to persist unaffected, in the past, in the present and in the future.

The next victims of social media will be based on media trends.

What is left when you take away all the ads and the packaging of Brexit is the truth of the product –

Wake up England and stop being the sulking wanting to leave the room when you still have the chance to influence the creation of a Europe, whole, free and at peace.

All human comments appreciated/All abuse and like clicks chucked in the bin.

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The UK National Debt is estimated to be £1.84 trillion.

Uk Defence spending is budgeted to be £48.3 billion.

A quick examination of the numbers reveals that the world continues to spend vastly disproportionate resources on creating and containing violence compared to what it spends on peace.

how you design the ballot would have a material impact on how it turned out.

Let’s face it over the past 50 years – everywhere we turn we are surrounded by a popular culture that is sacrificing community for convenience.

This convenience is what Capitalism thrives on. However today we are being told by the best science that there are twelve years left to change the way our economies rely on fossil fuels to avoid runaway climate change.

If you don’t believe this one has only to look at the state of Great Barrier Reef of Australia.

Our problems as they are can to tracked back to unbridled Imperial Capitalism which is now not in a position to disappear or change direction in order to avoid crawling towards ruin.

Why?

Because of productivity needs value and there is little value in Green energy.

Furthermore, with technological automation wage labour is coming to an end reducing the value of productivity with monopolies profits drying up.

WHAT IF ANYTHING CAN BE DONE TO AWAKEN US?

Old-fashioned demonstrations and civil disobedience have been replaced by anti-social online behaviour, which is now leading to a breakdown of government communications.

Under this psychology, society is, in turn, creating a culture that expresses our deepest yearnings and desires.

From nanotechnology to genomics to computer animation, technology is expanding our vision in all aspects of life.

As society moves toward a more progressive and accepting outlook, some would argue that this TECHNOLOGICAL movement which is called the fourth Industrial is creating information overload.

Take social media as if it is groundbreaking, which it is on many levels, but ultimately, it is just an extension of something we’ve always been attracted to – information.

Platforms like Facebook have just made it easier to curate and broadcast information like never before in the world of IF – without any knowledge whether this knowledge it true or false other than a like button.

We are entering this new world of IF with programmes that are manipulating neurons ( Like Google Deep dream program) with advances in reproductive science that could blur our sense of identity across the generational divide.

So where will we be in the year two thousand and fifty?

Sadly it’s anybody’s guess, BUT THERE IS ONE THING FOR SURE where we are now will seem like ancient history in five years not to mention the next thirty years.

How will we travel? What will we eat? How will our economy and global workforce shift?

A WHAT IF WORLD.

SO IN THIS IF WORLD if we don’t push technology in the direction of benefiting all we could have a very, very dystopian future. We incapable of answering where we will be in the next ten years never mind the next thirty odd years.

However I believe in the next ten years, science will prove that too much technology (e.g. heads always in our phones) is actually a negative thing for the mind and longevity.

I believe we’ll be forced to find a sustainable balance between technology use and real-life experiences. The human race is not an outpost of a galactic society; it is a domestic product.

Consumers will seek increased meaning associated with their products. Our flat screens will need smart apps that would help by providing smart nudges around their usage.

Why?

It’s almost as if we’re dependent upon them for some type of nourishment. But this nourishment comes as a trade-off: less physical contact with others, not taking the time to enjoy our environment, etc.

I want to see the intersection of social good and technology start to grow. All too often, problems being solved in tech are first world problems. Many of us forget that there are some huge global problems, particularly in the developing world, that need to be solved for the benefit of us all.

If we eventually come to our senses and realize that climate change, crumbling infrastructure, the demographic inversion, are going to toast our civilization unless we take action may be the next 50 years we could turn the IF world into the Now world.

To do this we will have to dignify a lot of new things as “work.”

Why?

Because when computations are all intelligent when everything is embedded in a control loop, the mathematical landscape of IF will change.

Technological civilisations do not last very long and although electronics got a head start of a few decades, biology is just beginning its great explosion.

So the question today is are we going to ignore our self-conscious for the sake of Twitter, a like click on Facebook.

What is needed is more transparency, more universal usable data, more computing power, and better software to take charge and make the IF world more Social.

The characteristics of race, class and gender are being reconstructed on flat screens to help us understand who we are as people but unfortunately, power, as we know, is disappearing into the long tall grass of hidden algorithms, that are electing world leaders like Mr Dump. Mr Bolsonaro. Mr Macri, Mrs May etc- AMERICA FIRST, AMAZONA LAST, BORROW, ISOLATION NEXT.

The time is now to understand what produces intelligence and self-awareness.

After all, a conscious Ai that resides in the cloud may not have the same priorities and values as does human life.

IN THE IF WORLD IF WE DONT HAVE A A COMMON UNDERSTANDING ABOUT AI, MACHINE LEARNING AND ALL THEY IMPLY IT’S LIKELY WE WILL CREATE AN INCREASING NUMBER OF PROBLEMS

Since we are now unable to stop the increasing power of AI we need to start controlling it. Addressing bias will be its biggest problem as it will only be amplified as algorithms evolve.

Intelligence. No. Silence, Yes.

The right has a name and has a face has the courage to say what many know, but we do not speak.

WHAT IS NEEDED IS A TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIALIST IF WORLD.

All human comments appreciated. All abuse and like clicks chucked in the bin.

Despite the dire state of the world today here is some good false news.

Let’s start with an issue that has not received enough attention in the media and popular understanding.

The Earth is finite and this fact will have real-world physical, economic, social, and political implications.

Thus, we are using an economic theory that is simply incapable and inapplicable for informing an unprecedented transformation of the economy by technology.

We need a discussion as to what political leaders, business leaders, and citizens think is an appropriate distribution of wealth across the entire population of the world. This focuses on the real question (how many people have what, independent of the size of the economy, though the two are linked) instead of discussing how to shape policies and taxes to achieve an unspecified growth target independent of wealth distribution.

Trump, Brexit, and Le Pen are representations that people understand growth only for the elite in the West are no longer tenable. Neoclassical economics ignores this obvious fact, yet it is used to guide most policy (eg, economic projections and scenarios), including that for climate change mitigation.

Perhaps a summary is that the human enterprise has outgrown the long-ability of the planet’s renewable resources to support us at our current numbers and our current rates of consumption and waste generation.

Climate change is just one piece of evidence of this fact.

By 2050, over 7 billion people will live in cities (80% of the world), and cities will be responsible for 75% of global carbon emissions. The battle for sustainable development will be won or lost in cities.

Urban planning needs to incorporate total populations, not simply the rich and middle classes; this is the only way that the economic potential of the majority can be harnessed for the national good.

The reality is that any activity that is not sustainable HAS TO STOP.

So far, non-renewable resources are what is primarily driving our economic engine. But by definition, non-renewables are being depleted and for the most part, will stop being economically available in this century. So we must plan rapidly for the day when humanity can live using just renewable resources while maintaining the biodiversity that makes the planet habitable.

In truth, sustainability is the ultimate environmental issue, the ultimate health issue, and the ultimate human rights issue.

The days when scientists could not care about the impact of their work on cultural, values and society are over. If they ever existed, which they didn’t, but that’s water over the dam.

Data-driven technologies are increasingly being integrated into many different parts of society, from judicial decision-making processes to automated vehicles to the dissemination of news.

Each of these implementations raises serious questions about what values are being implemented and to whom these implementations are accountable.

There is an increasing desire by regulators, civil society, and social theorists to see these technologies be “fair” and “ethical,” but these concepts are fuzzy at best.

As we are developing more and more ways to let computers take over reasoning through adaptive learning, we are faced with an existential question: What is it – long term – that makes us human?

AI, although very useful, will never approach human intelligence until it is embodied.

My #1 issue is not the future of democracy. The future is a complicated subject. Now more than ever, it’s fast-moving, complicated, increasingly immediate. We can’t keep thinking about the future as a far-off intangible. Today, things move so quickly, that the future already is happening, and already affecting us. And in many ways, we’re struggling to adapt quickly enough.

That’s only the beginning of the genetics, robotics, information and nano revolutions – which are advancing on a curve.

Meanwhile, we humans are trying to process this exponential change with our good old v. 1.0 brains. With precious little help at all from those creating this upheaval.

Algorithms by their very nature reason probabilistically and as uncertainty increases in the world, uncertainty increases in an algorithm’s ability to successfully and safely come to a solution.

Presently we have no commonly-accepted approaches and without an industry standard for testing such stochastic systems, it is difficult for these technologies to be widely implemented.

As technological developments increasingly drive social change, how can democratic societies empower ordinary people to have a say in the decisions that shape the technological trajectories that will, in turn, determine what the future looks like?

How can the public have meaningful input into the character of the algorithms that will increasingly determine both the nature of their relationships with other people on social media and their access to various important social goods?

How can we prevent an underwater arms race involving autonomous submersibles over the coming decades?

How can we ensure that questions about meaning and values, and not just calculations of risks and benefits, are addressed in decisions about human genome editing?

If there are people who are willing to blatantly refuse to believe that something is a lie, no matter how hard you try, they won’t listen. I’m not sure what amount of evidence is needed in this new paradigm of journalism to get newsreaders out of their new bubbles.

Human psychology is the main obstacle, unwillingness to bend one’s mind around facts that don’t agree with one’s own viewpoint.

The fundamental challenge we now face is how to handle a setting where anybody can get their views disseminated without intermediaries to prevent the distribution.

Somehow there still has to be some process of collectively coming to some agreement of what we are going to believe and what we think are consensual facts.

Instead, we have the golden age of the algorithm surveillance, automation, virtual reality, gene editing, the widening gap between wealthy and impoverished people, the worldwide questions of immigration, social media inserting a new level of governance in society, rapid urban growth isolating us from nature, smartphones isolating us from each other.

The challenge now is to make sure everyone benefits from this technology. It’s important that machine learning is researched openly, and spread via open publications and open source code, so we can all share in the rewards.

Our major challenge is related to our new capability of digitizing human beings.

The scale of popular social networks has democratized publishing, which effectively lets anyone – regardless of their intentions or qualifications – produce content that can appear journalistic.

Rather than waiting for politicians to make decisions and then we all argue over whether what they say reflects reality, we could have tools that engage people much earlier in the process so they can be involved in formulating ideas and drafting legislation.

As we begin in 2019 we have only 48.8% worried by Climate change/destruction of nature, 29.2% of us worried by Poverty, 22.7% worried by Government accountability and transparency/corruption, with only 18.2% worried by Food and water security.

Water is a social issue, a political issue, an energy issue, even a gender issue

– and how clean water scarcity triggers a host of problems, from disease

outbreaks to government feuds.

So the challenge before us is to begin to construct a truth signalling layer into the fabric of facts, particularly online. Even if we have structures that impose constraints on people in power and we put pressure on powerful people to be honest with us, in a sense, all of that is being circumvented by social media.

We need to turn social media upside down by changing the algorithms in Facebook or on Google to nudge people into sharing or consuming news that is slightly outside their normal comfort zone. We have to have a setting where we trust other people.

Fix it. Get out of your silo. If you can’t figure out the societal and cultural

implications of what you’re doing, start seeking out people who might.

A major issue most people face, without knowing it, is the bubble they live in.

Our world is far too beautiful to allow Social Media and profit-seeking algorithms to rip it apart. Happy New year.

All human comments appreciated/ All abuse and like clicks and false news chucked in the bin.

While we are all distracted by Brexit which has several possible outcomes in March 2019, all given a certain probability by market analysts:
– No-deal
– Canada-style trade deal
– Chequers plan
– EFTA/Norway agreement.
– Suspension of Article 50
– Reversal of Article 50.

Each is given a probability in terms of its likelihood but I would pay little attention to those probabilities as market analysts are not political insiders and in general, a lot of experts have misjudged the EU, as its rule-based way of operating has caught many out, not least the British negotiation team.

No matter how you look at the European Union it is a market run by rules which Independent Countries join to trade in a currency called Euros.

Although the creation of the euro, in particular, was deemed to be a key component helping to move the EU to an “ever closer union,” riding the continent of centuries of historic enmities, in reality, it has and is doing the opposite.

The monetary union and the austerity-linked conditions governing membership in the eurozone continue to create conditions ripe for extreme nationalist movements in Italy, France, Hungary, Poland and elsewhere.

The two principal goals of prosperity and political integration … are now more distant than they were before the creation of the eurozone.

The euro crisis was always likely to have a second act, and the stage was always likely to be Italy. (The only member yet to come to terms with the single currency. To do that, Italian democracy must be allowed to rise to the challenge.)

Were a further divorce to happen within the Union it would create a tremendous financial fallout for the rest of us, and likely mean the end of the euro itself.

The Euro to date has been both the glue and dissolvent of the European market.

Since the financial crisis of 2007-09, after dealing with Greece and the potential for defaults that led to a bailout of the EU member just a few short years ago, Italy is now on the list.

As such, these “states” are or were subject to solvency risk, because they themselves cannot create the euros to fund their debt.

With Brexit, it will become clear that we shouldn’t wait for the next crisis.

The next one could be very harmful, if not destroy the euro altogether.

A construction like the eurozone only partly rests on rules, technical procedures, institutions, etc. It relies on the fact that governments can trust each other at a minimum level. Take that away, and the whole edifice suddenly becomes much more fragile and the willingness to reform shrinks.

In these terms, a sustainable European currency requires either the export of the foundations of German economic strength to the periphery or Germany’s willingness to relinquish its obsession with ordo-liberalism and achieving a large current account trade surplus.

To date, its willingness to act to save the euro has not in fact been put to the test.

Far from involving domestic sacrifices imposed to save the euro, Germany’s handling of the eurozone crisis thus far has been, first and foremost, an opportunity for Germany to ‘Europeanise’ the burdens of its banks.

Germany may, therefore, end up with total dominance over something that doesn’t work, and holding the creditor bag on a currency that eventually may not exist.

Barring a wholesale shift in ideology, any short-term stitch-up will just set the stage for a bigger problem down the road, likely provoking more nationalist backlashes against the EU, which continues to play with fire, backed by Berlin.

So can the euro survive an Italian Bank/Country collapse?

Italy’s GDP has shrunk by a massive 10%, regressing to levels last seen over a decade ago. In terms of per capita GDP, the situation is even more shocking: According to this measure, Italy has regressed back to levels of 20 years ago, before the country became a founding member of the single currency.

As a result, around 20% of Italy’s industrial capacity has been destroyed, and 30% of the country’s firms have defaulted.

Its competitiveness can only be restored, therefore, via an “internal devaluation,” which in essence means crushing the living standards of the Italian people, so that they can compete in the global export market, rather than using fiscal policy to enhance the country’s domestic economy.

Understandably, the current coalition government in Rome doesn’t want to play along.

Its component parties were elected to defend the interests of the Italian people and deliver a different sort of economic program, which doesn’t consign the electorate to another decade of declining living standards. And Italy’s voters remain supportive if the most recent polls are anything to go by.

Europe’s central bank was (and is) the only institution that could credibly backstop the debt without limit because it is the sole issuer of the euro. However, the ECG has recently decided to put a stop to Quantitive Easing.

(Quantitative easing is a modern version of the printing press. It consists of the central bank creating money to buy government or private bonds held by investors on the market. The goal is for the latter to reinject the cash they get back into the economy by lending to households and businesses, which in turn must stimulate growth and inflation.)

As it concerns nineteen countries using the same currency, the ECB’s purchasing program is more framed than that of the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England or the Bank of Japan.

It may have taken Trump, Brexit and the threat of a global trade war, but the markets in Europe are finally waking up to what the end of QE will look like.

The markets are finally facing up to a reality where fundamentals actually matter and are no longer being swept away by ‘QE infinity’.

That should be a relief, given the huge distortions that QE has created in the global economy, most notably in asset price inflation and a consequent widening of inequality throughout the developed world.

The political implications are obvious and are still continuing. But how quickly and safely central banks can be weaned off this great monetary experiment remains to be seen.

If QE is no longer an active policy instrument what will replace it?

Quantitative easing is – and always has been – a dangerous monetary experiment and these are not the times to experiment. Especially not in Europe, where the political gap between north and south has widened in a disturbing way and interdependencies grow bigger and bigger.

What if Germany, France and the Netherlands continue to grow, and Italy, Greece and Portugal don’t?

Then the gap between the higher income rates they have to pay and their lack of growth becomes even bigger.

The political and economic instability of the southern European democracies is eroding the political basis of the euro – and therefore its stability. Because of this everyone suffers.

THE QUESTION IS WILL ITALY BE ALLOWED TO GO THE WAY OF GREECE?

That could prove economically calamitous, exposing the country’s international creditors (including other eurozone nations, such as Germany and France) to literally trillions in liabilities. To be repaid in what? Euros?

A reconstituted, and possibly heavily devalued, lira?

What happens to the pension funds? What about capital flight? Runs on the banks?

The point is that Italy does have leverage, but deploying the leverage will be costly for all concerned.

Considering the political turbulence in Italy which wants to raise its budget deficit by 2.4% in 2019, ( Its current debt is more than 2billion euros 131% of its GDP.)

Driving Italy out of the euro makes no sense at all. Italy is facing not just a financial but a democratic reckoning.

The euro debacle has tested the democratic integrity of the weakest eurozone member states to a breaking point. In Ireland, Spain and Portugal – the other countries affected by the single currency’s woes – democracy not only survived the test but flourished after it.

In 2019 we are going to see Italy’s political class discredited, its economy exposed as a sham, and it can only be rescued with other people’s money on other people’s terms.

It has now brought Italy to the brink of another failure of state as dangerous as the one that occurred during the confrontation with the Mafia in the early 1990s.

One of the major challenges for members of the euro area has always been not simply to rectify external imbalances, but to do so at reasonably high levels of employment. The fact that failures to meet this challenge are encountering political difficulties in Italy and elsewhere is hardly surprising.

So to stabilize the euro area and foster the financial integration across countries, we need to end the vicious circle of youth unemployment in the Southern countries of Europe and not penalise breached of budgetary Rules.

The euro is neither the problem nor the solution.

Italy’s profound problems lie at home — especially in central and southern Italy — and need to be addressed at home.

Both Europes and Italy’s problems arise out of acute regional imbalance.

You can not look at Italy as one economy, but two or perhaps three: North, Centre, South which is reflected in the whole of Europe’s problem.

Take the hyper-competitiveness of Germany.

Its massive current account surplus (8% of GDP) combined with its virtually full employment implies unambiguously that for Germany the euro is significantly undervalued, just as for Italy the evidence suggests that it is overvalued.

So we have an interesting, but risky, game of chicken developing.

Even though virtually every country within the eurozone, including fiscally virtuous Germany, has routinely breached budget limits, these rules do matter because, under Maastricht Treaty terms, countries can be punished by European institutions and also by markets, as has happened to Greece and now is increasingly happening to Italy.

Its debt load is the third-largest in the world and will eventually become unsustainable if the country is unable to revive economic growth.

What can Europe do – that is not already being done – to get its millions of jobless young people into work?

Things cannot be implemented overnight and will never be unless there is a willingness to move on with euro area reforms.

On top of all our problems is the Automation of the job market.

WILL THE EURO SURVIVE?

YES.

Boosting productivity is essential to resolve both problems.

So here is a suggestion.

Why not make the two most Southern Countries of Europe where the sun does shine – Italy Spain – the new green energy hobs of Europe – implementing a huge investment into solar power to supplement the energy requirements of the Northern member states.

All human comments appreciated. All abuse and like clicks chucked in the bin.

This post has many contradictions, as I am delving into an area with so many unknowns that are developing as we read.

You could say that there many more pressing problems in the world than technological development which will always be far beyond our ability to respond to it in any democratic manner.

If we are to place our trust in artificial intelligence, it is going to require a high degree of transparency.

As citizens, we must know how and in which context our data is used, and we must feel confident that data storage is carried out in a safe and secure manner.

We should also have insight into the basis on which artificial intelligence acts, so that we may better understand the implications and dilemmas we will have to relate to in the future. Here, it is crucial that we handle the ethical dilemmas jointly – and contribute to the creation of the common framework for a world not owned by Apple. Microsoft etc.

But how do we create a wide interest in contributing?

How do we ensure that it is not just the technologically initiated who create the framework on behalf of society as a whole?

The next century beginning on January 1,2101.

It might seem miles away and most if not all of us will have departed this world, long before it arrives, however – if we want Liberal democracy to survive or for that matter, the earth itself we need to put aside our smartphones and start defending our common values.

To do this it is important to remember the past and to keep it in mind so that as individuals and as a society we can grow and flourish.

As Emersons said:

“Society is a joint stock company in which the members agree for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. ”

The current age with its AI technology is far from achieving this rather with Machine learning and Data mining and algorithms it is just the beginning of undermining our own social foundation.

The problem is the opacity of the power of the algorithms, which means that it isn’t easy to determine when algorithmic governance stops serving the common good and instead becomes the servant of the powers that are creating a parallel form of governing alongside the more familiar tools of legislation and policy- setting.

In the coming years, vast fields of human life will be governed by digital code both invisible and unintelligible to human beings with significant political power placed beyond individual resistance and legal challenge.

Soon it will not be easy to determine when algorithmic governance stops serving the common good and instead becomes the servant of greed and inequality.

Once we all have digital ID numbers, it will become impossible to challenge one’s designation.

We are starting to see the use algorithms not only in the assisting of the election of idiots like D Trump but we are allowing Social media platforms to rip apart the institutions that are supposed to stabilise our political volatile world.

Why is this happing? Because our current democratic world is not working.

It seems unwilling to deal with the problems facing earth while its citizens are being gerrymandered by technology into populist short-term thinking.

As we watch the decline of mainstream parties the role of money in politics that once shaped government is no longer effective. For the last few decades, we see countries driven by growth at all costs with parties and governments responsive primarily to elites or narrow groups of voters rather than broad cross-sections of the population.

If we stopped and properly analyzed that past we would realize that our economy was strongest not when untethered free market capitalism was free to reign but when our government had pushed for massive social reforms which “artificially” (as some would say) supported the lower and middle class.

It was this, not the free market which allowed for Capitalism for profit to reign supreme in the past and if we are to ignore that then we can never hope to move forwards for we will forever be stuck solving the problems of the past not to mention the future.

The result is that citizens feel disregarded and disempowered with little or no respect for politicians that show a tumbling and marked deterioration in their capacity to inspire or the power they can exert in a shrinking sphere of influence due to social media.

I say: by ignoring the past we pass up valuable opportunities to learn more about what should be done to solve problems now.

This is the basis for historic achievements such as human rights and the rule of law, however, we on the threshold of not be able to reconcile these rights with the revolution promised by the fourth Industrial revolution.

Due to lack of access to data and any world regulations as to what can be done with data, there is a high probability that data collection collected on one pretext will be used entirely for a different purpose.

Take Denmark which is now distributing benefits by using algorithms that are undermining its democracy. They don’t fully appreciate the risks involved in enhancing the welfare state through AI applications.

Liberalism is the premise of the belief that coercive powers of public authorities should use in service of individuals freedom and that they should be constrained by laws controlling their scope, limits, and discretion.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Therefore, new systemic set-ups are required that can support the agility needed in a digital age.

The fourth industrial revolution does not stop just because we are not ready
to support it.

We must instead get ready. Get ready for a time of driverless cars and artificial intelligence that complements us as human beings, and augmented reality that connects the digital world with our physical one.

But actual legislation is difficult to imagine at the present time because we
simply cannot regulate something of which we do not know the extent… The fear is that we are doing something wrong because the market is so volatile and immature.

So for the moment instead of legislation, we should be putting in place policy frameworks and certifications as a means of regulating the area:

Accountability is a basic aspect when working on new technology of which we do not yet know the extent, the consequences or the full potential.

Accountability for technological development implies that we discuss solutions,
opportunities and engage in the conflicts and disagreements that will naturally follow in the aftermath – even if we do not know the destination of our train.

Others emphasize the fact that the accountability consists of people having control of the technology, and technology acts on the data fed to it. In other words, people are very much responsible for data being of the right quality to avoid so-called bias (distortions) in data and, thus, in the recommendations that artificial intelligence may contribute in what potentials may be released and of what challenges we should be aware of.

Thus, the goal has not been to identify a final result or a single truth that everyone may rally around.

Because the truth is that there are many attitudes toward artificial intelligence.

From how the area should be anchored politically to how to ensure that everyone enjoys the benefits of the technological development and what barriers may exist to this development.

From how the savings arising from increased automation and increased use of artificial intelligence are used to create value for the citizens:

From how to quickly decide on specific projects and ensuring rapid implementation?

Although EU legislation may be relevant, technology is a cross-border issue so international guidelines are equally important as many global companies are located in the US and China.

Finally, we have the problem of engagement.

None of us like our forefathers and all that came before them have any idea what the world is going to be like in the future but addictive technologies that have captured the attention and mind space of the youngest generation will formulate its foundations.

The long-term effects of children growing up with screen time are not well understood but early signs are not encouraging: poor attention spans, anxiety, depression and lack of in-person social connections are some of the correlations already seen, as well as the small number of teens who become addicts and non-functioning adults.

All in all, digital life is now threatening our psychological, economic and political well-being. People’s cognitive capabilities will be challenged in multiple ways, including their capacity for analytical thinking, memory, creativity, reflection, and mental resilience.

The digital divide will become worse, and many will be unable to pay for all the conveniences. Convenience will be chosen over freedom. Perhaps.

The more the culture equates knowledge with data and social life with social media, the less time is spent on the path of wisdom, a path that always requires a good quotient of self-awareness.

We’ve reached a phase in which men (always men) believe that technology can solve all of our social problems. Increasingly social media is continuing to reduce people’s real communication skills and working knowledge. Major industries – energy, religion, environment, etc., are rotting from lack of new leadership.

Some of these technologies are already operating without a person’s knowledge or consent. People cannot opt out, advocate for themselves, or fix errors about themselves in proprietary algorithms.

So the platforms will necessarily compromise humanity, democracy and other essential values. The larger the companies grow, the more desperate and extractive they will have to become to grow still further. Facebook and Twitter have become heavily ingrained in the process of democracy their digital footprint is not limited to a readership or viewing area.

We will see a reduction of engagement with and caring for the environment as a result of increased interaction with online and digital devices.

The society-wide effects of ‘continuous partial attention’ and the tracking, analysis and corruption of the use of data trails are only beginning to be realized. Without tenacity, self-control and some modicum of intelligence about the agenda of social media, the interruption generation will miss out on the greatness that could be theirs.

Digital life will take people’s privacy and influence their opinions. People will be fed news and targeted information that they will believe since they will not access the information needed to make up their own minds.

Out of convenience, people will accept limitations of privacy and narrowed information resources. Countries or political entities will be the influencers of certain groups of people. People will become more divided, more paranoid as they eventually understand that they have no privacy and need to be careful of what they say, even in their own homes.

Understanding well-being in terms of human flourishing – which includes among other things the exercise of autonomous agency and the quality of human relationships – it seems to clear to me that the ongoing structuring of our lives by digital technologies will only continue to harm human well-being.

This is a psychological claim, as well as a moral one. Unless we are able to regulate our digital environments politically and personally, it is likely that our mental and moral health will be harmed by the agency-undermining, disempowering, individuality-threatening and exploitative effects of the late-capitalistic system marked by the attention-extracting global digital communication firms.

You see it everywhere. People with their heads down, more comfortable engaging with a miniature world-in-a-box than with the people around them.

At the same time, increasingly sophisticated technology for emotion and response manipulation is being developed. This includes devices such as Alexa and other virtual assistants designed to be seen as friends and confidants. Alexa is an Amazon interface – owned and controlled by a giant retailer: she’s designed, ultimately, to encourage you to shop, not to enhance your sense of well-being.

It remains to be seen whether any of the promises made by digital technology companies will be beneficial to mankind other than profit for profit sake. The ethics of software development and the idea that technology should be designed to enhance people’s well-being are both principles that should be stressed as part of any education in software design.

Proponents of an elusive work-life balance may argue that you can always switch off digital technology, the reality is that it is not being switched off – not because it cannot, but there is now a socio-cultural expectation to be always available and responding in real-time.

What we are seeing now becoming reality are the risks and uncertainties that we have allowed to emerge at the fringes of innovation.

The technological path we’re on and how to evaluate techno-social engineering of humans has to be challenged NOW not in the future.

Technology will be needed if we are to develop beyond a one plant species.

Conditions of modern life could be driving changes in the makeup of our genes. Our bodies and our brains may not be the same as those of our descendants.

Technology may well put an end to the brutal logic of natural selection with evolution becoming purely cultural.

This gives us good grounds for thinking that evolution (whether biological, memetic or technological) will continue to lead in desirable directions.

There is no genetic or evolutionary reason that we could not still be around to watch the sun die. Unlike ageing, extinction does not appear to be genetically programmed into any species.

Meanwhile there is gradual progress in neuroscience and artificial intelligence, and eventually, it will become possible to isolate individual cognitive modules and connect them up to modules from other uploaded minds…

Modules that conform to a common standard would be better able to communicate and cooperate with other modules and would, therefore, be economically more productive, creating pressure for standardization…

I think the next decade will be one of retrenchment and adjustment, while society sorts out how to deal with our perhaps over-optimistic construction of the digital experience.

The addictive nature of social media means the dis-benefits could be profound.

There is a reason the iPhone was initially called a ‘crack-phone.

There might be no niche for mental architectures of humankind.

All human comments appreciated. All abuse and like clicks chucked in the bin.

Platforms like Facebook enable people’s data to be used in ways that take power away from voters and give it to data-analyzing campaigners.

Unfortunately, it seems that none of us sees this. We don’t hold media technology firms accountable for degrading our public conversations.

With only months to go before Britain exits the European Union, the English government is in meltdown oblivious to what is happening in the world beyond and how it connects to Britain

All eyes are transfixed on the EU exit sign.

Critically, both for the EU and England it’s what happened on Social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook that will remain the biggest question of all after Brexit.

Both Twitter and Facebook have become a giant funnel not just for dark ads, but for dark money that evades election finance laws and the control of money spent during elections is the very basis of our electoral laws.

If we are now failing to recognise the above we are failing to appreciate how social media is breaking our democracy.

While we all are all burying our heads in the sand of smartphone it is obvious that Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter are the perfect cover for something far more chilling controlling the expression of public opinion in the political debate.

Although Twitter and Facebook are categorised as social networking services, in fact, they are as different as chalk and cheese. And, of the two, Twitter is more important in one respect: its impact on the arena in which societies discuss their political issues.

Twitter also has the capacity to turn “ordinary” people into broadcasters, a development whose implications we are only just beginning to digest. Yellow Jackets, Brixiters who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?

Technologies such as Twitter, which offer real-time tracking of public opinion, are the visible foundations of the Arab Spring, Donald Trump’s election, Brexit and the Yellowjackets.

Democracy and the rule of law are been subverted in plain sight.

If you look at the USA Twitter is the de facto newswire for the planet, which means that a company that can regulate expressions of opinion might be very powerful indeed.

And that should make us nervous.

So is there anything that can be done?

No much unless we pass laws regulating these platforms and make them responsible for what is posted on their platforms.

One of the most striking aspects of the epoch-making Brexit is (as with the Syrian War the Iraq, and Yemen war) is the way many MPs cited the emailed opposition of their constituents to armed intervention as a reason for voting against the proposed action.

Thus, it is evident that we are all increasingly embracing the importance of social media and its value in modern human communication.

However, this trend can only be assumed as the beginning of an envisioned well connected and digital adept world.

So recent history has evidenced that Social Media is a potent tool with transformational abilities to shape and influence the way in which people communicate and share information.

One of the qualities that define Social Media is its ability to transcend beyond borders, without observing spatial distance that exists between and amongst the geographies.

In addition, social media connects individuals on a semi-personal level, while allowing instantaneous feedback and dialogue.

But, this does not rule out the possible abuse of such innocent yet powerful platforms of communications.

Different sectors ranging from government to business also embeds and encourages the embracement of social media platforms into their processes in order to enhance organisational efficiency.

We might be gradually realising the significance of social media for democratic benefits that it is seen as an agent of public discourse and a driver of public participation and freedom of speech amid political and democratic uncertainty.

It might be rising the political and democratic consciousness but the power of social media in the political and democratic dispensation cannot be underestimated.

Is social media damaging democracy? Yes, but we can also use social media to save democracy.

We have to stop governments from colluding with an omniscient surveillance superpower but use it as their eyes to see the inequalities we all live in.

THERE IS NOT THE TIME FOR COUNTRIES TO BE MOVING TO ID ISOLATION IF WE ARE TO HARNESS TECHNOLOGY TO SERVE THE WORLD.

Just as there is nothing inevitable about democratic survival, neither is the demise of democracy guaranteed.

These changes are especially likely to go unnoticed when popularly elected leaders twist laws to their advantage or frame attacks on checks and balances as populist reforms limiting the power of elites.

Civil society must reclaim its rightful place by demanding genuine participation in governance, including decisions on peace initiatives, environmental protection and trade and investment agreements.

A large part of humanity still doesn’t have it.

All human comments appreciated. All abuse and like clicks chucked in the bin of the cloud.

Most mainstream textbooks have the word “economics” in their title as if no differentiating adjective exists.

THE NASTY REALITY IS:

AS THE WORLD POPULATION GROWS IT WILL BE TO THE DETHRONEMENT OF THE PLANT AND TO THE SUSTAINABILITY OF ANY ECONOMIC SYSTEM WHETHER IT IS CAPITALIST OR OTHERWISE AS CAPITALISM HAS ALWAYS HAD A NEED FOR POVERTY TO KEEP COST DOWN.

However, through social media, the poor are no longer invisible and the consequences of this are now beginning to becoming evident.

It is a grim truism of modern life that everything from civil rights violations and health crises to environmental degradation and educational barriers are disproportionately suffered by the people least financially and socially equipped to deal with them.

Yet the reality of capitalism is different from its celebratory self-image.

IT IS NOW a form of algorithmic trading in which funds trade on the small fluctuations in asset prices without ever owning the assets, with us the powerhouse in the making of fortunes that put colossal resources in the hands of a relative few, while at the same time, see others without even the means to sustain themselves.

Combined the above with climate change and poverty and THE FORTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (AS IT HAS BEEN CHRISTENED BY THE ADVANCES IN TECHNOLOGICAL) IS CREATING A CAPITALIST WORLD THAT IS REMOVING IT FROM VIEW.

DRIVEN BY CONSUMPTION PRODUCING ALGORITHMS JUST FOR PROFIT FOR THE ONE PERCENTERS, WHILE OUR GOVERNMENTS ACT LIKE THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE TO GROWTH AT ALL COSTS.

Wherever you look you will see that enormous gap between rich and poor growing and this gap between rich and poor is now threatening to destroy us and the world we all live in.

To those who think capitalism and inequality need each other.

Capitalism requires inequality of wealth, runs this right-of-centre argument, to stimulate risk-taking and effort; governments trying to stem it with taxes on wealth, capital, inheritance and property kill the goose that lays the golden egg.

It took war and depression to arrest the inequality dynamic, along with the need to introduce high taxes on high incomes, especially unearned incomes, to sustain social peace.

Now the ineluctable process of blind capital multiplying faster in fewer hands is underway again and on a global scale with self-serving greed in the form of profit-seeking algorithms.

Anyone with the capacity to own in an era when the returns exceed those of wages and output will quickly become disproportionately and progressively richer- APPLE, MICROSOFT, E BAY, AMAZON- and when we buy their products online are in fact vote for them and their system.

The mass of employees are not free inside capitalist enterprises to participate in the decisions that affect their lives (e.g., what the enterprise will produce, what technology it will use, where production will occur, and what will be done with the profit workers’ efforts help to produce). In their exclusion from such decisions, modern capitalism’s employees resemble slaves and serfs.

YOU CAN WATCH THIS PROCESS IN REAL TIME WITH BREXIT, OR AMERICA FIRST.

In Britain, it may be true that the top 1% pays a third of all income tax, but income tax constitutes only 25% of all tax revenue: 45% comes from VAT, excise duties and national insurance paid by the mass of the population.

As a result, the burden of paying for public goods such as education, health and housing is increasingly shouldered by average taxpayers, who don’t have the wherewithal to sustain them. Wealth inequality thus becomes a recipe for slowing, innovation-averse, rentier economies, tougher working conditions and degraded public services.

All in all, you could say that no real changes have been made in global capitalism OTHER THAN IT IS NOW RUN BY ANALYSING ALGORITHMS THAT RECOMMEND WHERE, WHEN AND HOW WITH TO SATISFY SHORT TERM PLEASURE.

UNFORTUNILTY it is simply depriving us and our children of fundamental rights of a decent & caring society, fearless & dignified living, by a deprivation of the material conditions for the reproduction of society, and a failure to develop the full capabilities of human beings.

OF COURSE, our collective sense of justice is outraged as we are witnessing in the recent Paris Riots, the Climate Change Conference in Poland sponsored by coal trying to set rules to govern pledges that will be broken as soon as the ink dries and the ongoing Brexit charade which has nothing to do with peoples wellbeing.

Where does all of this leave us other than with an ominous sense of impending implosion reverberates throughout the world with national politics and culture waning no one seems to know or care.

Our TV screens with Christmas coming we are bombarded with the worst images of Capitalism – advertisers promoting materialism, alongside appeals to donate money to save everything from children in Yemen too abandoned animals.

While it is heartbreaking the worst part is that our governments are complicit.

Despite the famine, despite the bombing of a busload of school kids in Yemen countrieslike the US, UK, France, and Canada are still supplying the Saudis with hundreds of billions of dollars in tanks and missiles.

However, it has little effect as we look on from a distance sitting at home before our own little stages our TV’s, our I Pads, our Smartphones, our courtyards of miracles where an image sweeps across the previous one without trace.

Everything is on a reduced scale, even emotions.

That’s the trouble with shadow political power structures. Their true shape and purpose stay hidden while they capture democracy.

From all this, we shall draw some conclusions, in the absence of any convincing certainties one has to pretend that we shall solve Climate Change (that is going to drive more inequality and eventually the extinction of our biodiversity, followed by us due to the lack of fresh water or clean air.) and currents world conflicts that are only the tip of the coming wars over diminishing natural resources.

What needs to happen?

Let’s put the plant first before space exploration, before material productivity consumption, before cultural identity, before consumerism, before America first, before Brexit isolation, before trade deals, before nuclear power, before religious beliefs, before skin colour, before short-term pleasure, before us.

Let’s go for a diverse economic system where toxic wealth inequalities are less indulged rather than a monopolised marketplace.

Let’s enshrine Water and Fresh air into all our actions.

Any of the above can now only be achieved by using the power of Social media which is being used in ways that shape politics, business, world culture, education, careers, innovation, and more.

THE PROBLEM WITH SOCIAL MEDIA THAT IS HAVING A REAL IMPACT ON SOCIETY IS THAT IT IS LEADERLESS.

On one hand, it generates insights, stimulates demand, and create targeted product offerings but when people are presented with the option of ‘liking’ a social cause, they use this to opt out of actually committing time and money.

Social sharing has encouraged people to use computers and mobile phones to express their concerns on social issues without actually having to engage actively with campaigns in real life.

On the other hand, it without social media, social, ethical, environmental and political ills would have minimal visibility.

Increased visibility of issues has shifted the balance of power from the hands of a few to the masses.

Capitalism understands the above more than our world organisation or governments.

Social networks feed off interactions among people, they become more powerful as they grow. Each person with marginal views can see that he’s not alone. And when these people find one another via social media, they can do things — create memes, publications and entire online worlds that bolster their worldview, and then break into the mainstream.

Social networks are helping to fundamentally rewire human society.” Because social media allows people to communicate with one another more freely, they are helping to create surprisingly influential social organizations among once-marginalized groups – Popularism- Short-term politics with no long-term aspirations promoting social ills.

Across the globe, mobile devices dominate in terms of total minutes spent online. This puts the means to connect anywhere, at any time on any device in everyone’s hands.

Their support is limited to pressing the ‘Like’ button or sharing content.

Is it not time that we demand that our internet platforms introduce a dislike button.

So far humans have had a monopoly on decision making but we are sleepwalking with Data Analyzing algorithms eroding our societies that have the sole purpose of predicting our next purchase or move.

Artificial intelligence in its current form is mostly harmless but that’s not going to last.

Fueled by powers of machine learning with no end in sight it is encroaching into to our homes without human examples or guidance, without any knowledge of the domain beyond basic rules of promoting profit.

WHAT IF ANYTHING CAN BE DONE?

We need to ensure that Ai Systems are provable safe and beneficial, and unbias regardless of how intelligent they become.

Imagine the havoc and harm they will inflict with greater power, scope and social reach.

When developers are at a loss to explain the behaviour of their creations we will then need Ai to explain to humans why they reached certain decisions, or what their conclusions actually mean.

At the moment we are seeing poorly thought out systems released into the world without any real ethical or safety standards. Governments and our out of date international world organisation have a role to play, by introducing and enforcing standards and regulations.

Changing present capitalist corporate culture won’t be easy, but it needs to start at the top.

Just look at biotechnology some research findings are too dangerous to share with the public.

It is time we all grew up and accept some responsibility for Artifical Intelligence impact on the world.

Why?

Because AI is poised to be one of the most daunting challenges our species have ever faced, decoupling us from human speed and timelines, operating beyond human levels of control and comprehension.

AT THE MOMENT IT IS RATHER THAN TURNING THE ATHOMISPHRIC DOWN IT IS CONTRIBUTING (IN MOST OF ITS FORM) TO TURN IT UP.

On a deeper level, the idea of self-referential feedback may be crucial not only in the evolution of life but for its origin as well.

It may even be that the algorithmic nature of cellular automata could be the key to removing a major barrier to explaining life’s origin — defining what life is, to begin with.

It’s pretty hard to explain the origin of something if you don’t know what it is.

When the environment changes, the rules for surviving may change as well. Life’s activity generates feedback that influences the rules of life.

You can’t blame scientists for conceiving of the universe in terms familiar from their everyday life. That’s just the way that thinking works, whether it’s about the laws of nature or anything else. And you have to admit that nowadays computers have invaded everyday life so thoroughly that it’s only natural for scientists to think about nature in a computational way.

If the world is a computer, life is an algorithm, so all algorithms and how they

work, and for what reasons, should be made public to ensure both social and